The day some local political junkies have long waited for is finally here: Filing day for the 2013 General Election.

There are eight seats in three Lenoir County municipalities up for election in November: the mayor and two city council in Kinston, three town council in La Grange and two town board in Pink Hill.

Potential candidates for those seats can begin filing today at noon. Filing ends in two weeks, on Friday, July 19, also at noon. It’s inexpensive for a candidate to file for office: only $10 for the Kinston and La Grange seats, and only $5 for the Pink Hill seats.

One of the candidates, former Kinston City Manager Ralph Clark, will be at the Board of Elections at noon to officially file for the Kinston mayor’s race.

“I announced (my intentions) early and I plan to live up to what my announcement said,” said Clark, who told The Free Press in April of his intent to run for the seat currently held by B.J. Murphy. “I want to be the first person to tell people I’m running for mayor.”

Clark is the only announced candidate for mayor; Murphy told The Free Press in February he would not be running for reelection. Other potential candidates for mayor — including Danny Rice of Woodmen of the World and Mayor Pro Tem Joe Tyson — have said they’re not running for mayor, too.

There have been a dearth of announcements for the two Kinston City Council seats, too; one-term councilman Bobby Merritt formally told The Free Press last month he wouldn’t run for reelection, while the other incumbent, two-term councilman Robbie Swinson, has not made an official decision whether or not he’s going to run for reelection.

John Nix, one of the people directly responsible for nonpartisan elections coming to Kinston this year, made an unsuccessful run for City Council in 2011 and was planning to run again this year. However, he told The Free Press last month that he, too, won’t run for one of the seats in November.

Lenoir County Board of Elections Director Dana King admitted she was surprised by the lack of announced candidates heading into today’s filing.

“I thought I would’ve heard more people out there saying they were going to run for one of the seats,” she said. “I’ve heard very little talk of anyone wanting to file this year.”

This is the first year the Kinston elections will also be nonpartisan, meaning voters won’t see the political parties of candidates on their ballot. As a result, there also is no need for a primary election — everyone who files for one of the seats will be on the final November ballot.

Additionally, regardless of how many candidates are running for the various seats and the potential closeness of the races, there won’t be a runoff.

Page 2 of 2 - “This means it’s less money for the city to have to pay out,” King said. “When you have that few of candidates on a ballot, if we had a primary, there could have been a runoff. That would mean two extra elections the city would have had to pay for.”

Bryan C. Hanks can be reached at 252-559-1074 or at Bryan.Hanks@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at BCHanks.